Politics is now taking second place to overwhelming concerns about the economy. Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement had promised lower rents and food prices, but its...

The first of the two commissions on Kenya’s election crisis – both advocated by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and his group of eminent persons –...

The Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence was chaired by Kenya’s Justice Phillip Waki and included Gavin A. McFadyen, former Assistant Commissioner for Operations in the New Zealand...

The return of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to Mogadishu following the signing of a power-sharing agreement in Djibouti on 26 November will shape the coming stuggle for control...

Ethiopia argues that its withdrawal from Somalia will help the power-sharing talks brokered by the United Nations Special Representative Ahmadou Ould Abdallah. A principal condition for the participation...

Journalists are no longer in favour with President Yoweri Museveni, who seems to blame them for his waning popularity. He once treated his encounters with the press as...

The South African brewery giant SABMiller opened a new beer factory in Juba this week, the first plant in Sudan since President Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri symbolically threw at...

Rose Kabuye’s French lawyers think the case against her is profoundly flawed. She was extradited to France following her arrest by German police at Frankfurt airport on...

Congo-Kinshasa's Local Government Minister Mbusa Nyamwisi was running his own militia in the east a decade ago. Now he says it might be helpful for the Kinshasa government...

Tanzania’s judges have piles of files to read over the Christmas holiday. A flurry of former ministers, high-profile businessmen and ex-employees of the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) were...

Mercenaries, the media and worried looking men in suits are much exercised by the escalating operations of the Somali pirates patrolling the Gulf of Aden in search of...

Chinese peacekeepers in Southern Sudan have been awarded United Nations Peacekeeping Medals two months early to coincide with the Lunar New Year Spring Festival, celebrated on 7 February. Events in Chad...

Until public protests over Darfur two years ago, Japan was one of the biggest customers for Sudanese oil. But unlike China and India it had no direct investments in Sudan's...

Japan would honour its promises to increase aid and investment in Africa despite the departure of Prime Miniter Yasuo Fukuda, said Foreign Minister Shintaro Ito during a trip to Kenya this...

A new phase in China's relations with Sudan began on 1 September when Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun inaugurated the new Chinese Consulate in Juba. This was an historic move...

Kenya finally has succeeded in bringing together rival suitors for an oil refinery rehabilitation contract - but failed to secure an agreement. The acting Finance Minister, John Michuki,...

Talks on a complex three-party investment deal between China and Angola and the ailing Air Tanzania Company are nearing conclusion, officials have confirmed in Dar es Salaam. The aim...

Kenyans feared another whitewash when Justice Philip Waki was appointed to head the Commission to Investigate the Post-Election Violence. Yet he has confounded the sceptics and produced a...

The mandate of the Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) was to 'investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the violence, the conduct of state security agents in...

Judgement day is coming for those individuals and companies who benefited from a 133 billion Tanzania shilling (US$117 million) fraud at the Bank of Tanzania (Central Bank),...

Foreign Minister Bernard Membe's announcement that the government was considering joining the Organisation of Islamic Conference has reopened a national controversy. A decade ago, then President Ali Hassan...

As the crisis around Goma intensifies, conditions further north are deteriorating, opening up the possibility of more regional intervention. In the mineral-rich Orientale, Ugandan Joseph Kony’s Lord’s...

The news that the arms onboard the hijacked MV Faina were destined for the Government of Southern Sudan – via Kenyan end-user certificates and covert transport –...

Asia’s navies are planning tougher action to combat the menace of piracy along Somalia’s coastline and in the Red Sea region. The well-organised pirates have targeted Asian ships...

India’s navy hosted its first Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in Delhi in February to promote cooperation amongst 26 states in the region. Its aim was to foster...

As Western governments consider placing sanctions on Kenyan leader Mwai Kibaki and his ministers for refusing to negotiate over the disputed elections, Asian states have maintained a near...

Facing no opposition, the Front Patriotique Rwandais (FPR) won an unsurprising landslide in the parliamentary elections on 15 September, the second since the 1994 genocide. The European Union’s...

The rebel Congolese Tutsi General, Laurent Nkunda, has called for an uprising against the Kinshasa government. The 3,000-6,000 men of his Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple...

Those who thought that the 1999 split in the National Islamic front, when Hassan Abdullah el Turabi was officially sidelined, would seriously change Khartoum’s Islamist regime might be...

The threat of an indictment for war crimes of Sudan’s President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir by the International Criminal Court has not diminished the Khartoum regime’s willingness...

The political parties are waking up to the potentially ruinous implications of the new Political Parties Act. Passed into law in the run-up to last year's ill-fated general...

Somalia's pirates are busy guarding the 33 Ukrainian tanks and other equipment captured on the MV Faina on 25 September. United States' naval vessels surround the ship...

The diplomatic dance at the United Nations General Assembly is intensifying over the arrest warrants against Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir sought by the Chief Prosecutor...

The United Nations World Food Programme has successfully appealed to the European Union for protection of its life-saving cargoes of food aid. On 15 September, the EU’s foreign...

Two official commissions of inquiry completed their public hearings last week. The Kriegler Commission’s subject is electoral fraud in the disputed presidential election of December 2007; the Waki...

Commissions of inquiry are the Houdini act of the Kenyan state, getting the government out of tight spots by a public display of evidence, later shelved and producing...

France had hoped to repair the breach but Rwandan President Paul Kagame rejected the olive branch. On 5 August, his government published the report of an ‘independent’ commission,...

Iran is supplying Khartoum with military equipment for its attacks in Darfur, in clear breach of the United Nations arms embargo, Africa Confidential has learned. On 28 August,...

The state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has produced a well researched but politically explosive report which links six government ministers to the violence that followed this...

In Nairobi, attacks were launched by the ethnic gangs known as Siafu, Bukhungu, Jeshi la Darajani, Ghetto and Mungiki. The Siafu gang was supported by 'some councillors' and...

The risk of another war between Ethiopia and Eritrea grew on 31 July, when the United Nations Security Council closed its mission along the border, the UN...

The tenth anniversary of the East African embassy bombings, when 206 Kenyans, 11 Tanzanians and 12 Americans died and over 5,000 were injured, was marked by sombre...

Below are key quotes from the 5 August complaint filed in a US civil court against the Sudanese and Iranian governments: 'The Defendant, the Republic of the...

The epic plan for the world's longest suspension bridge, stretching 27 kilometres between Djibouti and Yemen (AC Vol 49 No 13) and officially launched in Djibouti on 28...

Personal rivalries between President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Nur Hassan 'Adde' threaten the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu and undermine the fragile United Nations-backed negotiations with...

The International Criminal Court's bid to put President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir on trial for genocide is the sternest test yet for the emerging system of international...

There has been a strong international reaction to the ICC's application for an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omer el Beshir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against...

A day after the no-confidence vote in Parliament against ex-Finance Minister Amos Kimunya, the Deputy Prime Minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, called a press conference. He was belligerent, describing the...

Having amended the constitution to allow him to run for a third consecutive term in 2006, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni intends to run for a fourth five-year term....

The government's secret sale of Nairobi's Grand Regency Hotel has caused a political storm, induced the resignation of Finance Minister Amos Kimunya on 8 July and raised many...

Libyan investment in Kenya has grown over the past three years from almost nothing to an estimated tens of billions of Kenya shillings. The Libyans are now on...

The immediate trigger for the crisis over Abyei is Khartoum's refusal to accept a ruling made by the Abyei Boundaries Commission (ABC) under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement...

The debate over the International Criminal Court's charges against President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir (see Pointer) has focused on the ICC, the fractious peace negotiations and the...

Somalia faces a worsening food crisis, largely ignored in the graphic reports of clashes between President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's regime and its nationalist and Islamist opponents (AC Vol...

Will Khartoum finally drop President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, charged on 14 July with ten counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? That is what...

Plots in the 3,000 acre Moi Ndabi settlement scheme in Naivasha were laid out by the government in 1994 for victims of ethnic clashes. They went instead to...

Attorney General Amos Wako's delays in prosecuting officials accused of involvement in the Anglo Leasing scandals (AC Vol 45 No 11) means the Kenyan courts may dismiss the...

Three months after the painful formation of a grand coalition government (AC Vol 49 No 11), there is talk of a 'grand opposition'. Two developments encourage this. ...

On 30 June, Southern Sudan's Vice-President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon ordered the Ugandan People's Defence Forces out of the country, accusing the UPDF of kidnapping and killing a...

Companies drilling on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert, which straddles the border with Congo-Kinshasa, had a rude shock in mid-June when President Yoweri Museveni announced that Uganda...

Soon after his December 2005 inauguration, President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete replied to critics who said he was too soft to run a country bogged down in corruption: ‘I...

Fighting has begun around Ras Doumeira, the area of Djibouti seized by Eritrean troops in April (AC Vol 49 No 11). Both sides had built up their forces,...

The Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia Chairman, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has agreed to a ceasefire, but harder-line militants have rejected it and called for his expulsion...

The political aftershock of the attacks on Omdurman and Abyei is spreading. Most dramatically, Southern President Salva Kiir Mayardit has condemned the government in which his Sudan People’s...

The attack on the capital by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on 10 May opened a new chapter in the stories of Darfur and of Sudan's Islamist...

The Justice and Equality (initially Justice and Equity) Movement was founded in late 2002, after government-backed militias intensified their attacks in Darfur; it became operational by late 2003....

There had been no shortage of warnings about Abyei, the area on the North-South border where Khartoum has refused to implement a boundary ruling under the Comprehensive Peace...

Before dawn on 1 May, two United States' AC130 gunships from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti destroyed a house in Dusamareb, central Somalia, not far from the Ethiopian border....

The power-sharing deal seems deliberately ambiguous, based on the theory that Mwai Kibaki (with his Party of National Unity, PNU) would be President and Prime Minister Raila Odinga...

There is little prospect that the Independent Review Commission, chaired by South African Judge Johann Kriegler, will get to the bottom of the election skulduggery that triggered mass...

This week, Finance Minister Amos Kimunya has downplayed talk of a looming budget crisis and slumping growth rates. His determined optimism follows a statement by National Development Minister...

After Djibouti complained that Eritrea had invaded, President Issayas Afewerki responded on 19 May that this was 'a wild invention' with hidden foreign backing. On 4 April, Eritrean...

Talks to resolve the intermittent border disputes between Kampala and Kinshasa have been called off after Congolese troops seized a tract of disputed territory between Arua district and...

The flurry of summitry in response to a series of mortar attacks on Bujumbura by the Hutu rebels of the Forces Nationales de Libération (FNL) in late April...

The rapprochement between Sudan and the United States continues apace but US Special Envoy Richard Williamson has warned that he does not foresee full 'normalisation' during his tenure...

Khartoum’s National Congress (NC, aka National Islamic Front) regime is negotiating a ‘normalisation’ of relations with the United States, according to documents obtained by Africa Confidential. News of...

Kenyans seem relieved to have a government but baffled at the brazenness of their politicians. The deal between President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga was better than a...

The new ministerial team is Kenya’s most expensive ever: 42 ministers and 52 assistant ministers out of 222 members of parliament – 42% of all MPs. President Mwai...

In the bush camp on the border between Sudan and Congo-Kinshasa, the Lord’s Resistance Army negotiators, led by Alfred James Obita, were swigging away on a bottle of...

Who's who in the peace talks with the Lord's Resistance Army.

The two-week national census, which began on 22 April, will not provide accurate information on the size of the population but it will strengthen the regime’s grip on...

Sending its own man to run the Abyei enclave means that the Sudan People's Liberation Movement is clearly challenging the National Congress (NC, aka National Islamic Front). The...

The then First Vice-President, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, and the late Sudan People's Liberation Movement Chairman, Colonel John Garang de Mabior, signed the Principles of Agreement on Abyei...

Congo-Kinshasa and Uganda still disagree about their shared border, but the scraps in which soldiers and civilians were killed on Lake Albert late last year have faded away,...

The suspension on 8 April of negotiations over cabinet portfolios risks taking the country back to the turmoil of January and February. Just after Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic...

There is a long, if surprising, alliance between two very different African leaders: the puritanical President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda and the extravagant Colonel Moammar el...

Next week, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to deliver a report on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border dispute which Ethiopia hopes will break the logjam and deliver a...

Ethiopian diplomats are confident of a couple of successes at the United Nations in the coming weeks. The first is over Somalia, where the UN Special Representative Ahmedou...

A public relations jamboree in Khartoum on 10-13 March tried to persuade European politicians and businesses that they are missing out on billions of petrodollars because of Western...

The overthrow of Colonel Mohamed Bacar's regime on Anjouan Island by 1,500 African Union troops and 600 Comoran soldiers took less than a day but does not guarantee...

Suddenly optimism has broken out about the outcome of the long, drawn- out talks between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. The mediators are so...

On 3 March, a United States' cruise missile hit a home on the outskirts of Dobley, a small crossing point on the Somalia-Kenya border. Dobley is in an...

This month, Kenya's economy faces it first big post-election test when the successful mobile telephone operator Safaricom lists on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE). According to the ever...

Formed a decade ago, Trans-Century Limited has grown over the past five years to become the biggest private equity firm in East Africa, with a multimillion dollar portfolio....

President Mwai Kibaki and putative Prime Minister Raila Odinga spent the day together at the Karen Open, Nairobi's most prestigious golf tournament on 10 March. Spectacularly out of...

The two-page agreement signed by President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga at Harambee House on 28 February could hardly have been simpler. Drafted by Attorney General...

In the aftermath of the signing of the power-sharing agreement on 28 February, Raila Odinga turned to his adversary, addressing him as 'My countryman, President Mwai Kibaki'. Ever...

China is worried about the 'deadlock' in Darfur and is looking for new ideas, its Special Representative for Africa and Darfur, Liu Guijin, told a leading Sudanese civic...

Britain’s Conservative Party, which has been campaigning against the Sudan government’s Darfur policy, faces charges of hypocrisy after it accepted more than US$800,000 in contributions from a United...

Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair landed in Kigali on 23 February on his mission to give ‘unpaid’ advice to the Rwandan government and to his ‘long standing...

The announcement of a political deal on 14 February at talks at a Kilaguni Game Lodge mediated by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan boosted morale but...

Outsiders have been belatedly increasing pressure on Kenya's feuding politicians as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan moved the negotiating teams to the secluded Kilaguni Safari Lodge...

Kizengo Kayanza Peter Pinda, who served as Private Secretary to three Tanzanian presidents, Julius Nyerere, Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Benjamin Mkapa, is President Jakaya Kikwete's surprising choice as...

A Spanish judge has made it unsafe for 40 senior Rwandan officials to travel outside their own country by issuing international arrest warrants against them for crimes including...

Amid the latest round of killing in the Rift Valley, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame suggested that intervention by Kenya’s military may be the only solution left: ‘I know...

Confidence at State House was knocked by their party’s appalling parliamentary results in the 27 December elections and the furore over the disputed presidential vote. For several days,...

At the height of this week’s violence in the Rift Valley, senior Kenyan politicians on both sides of the divide began discussing the possibility of a military intervention....

Such is the depth of despair about the intractability of the post-election crisis that many saw the meeting of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, arranged by former United...

Pastor Robert Kipchoge Birgen of the African Inland Church in Chepsiria is an Oskar Schindler of the North Rift, a man who saved the lives of people hunted...

El Sadig's view that the National Congress regime (NC, as the NIF has rebranded itself) is afraid of violence spreading looks like wishful thinking. As El Sadig...

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement has been unable to find a Nuba leader of the stature of the founder of the Nuba rebellion, the late Yusif Kuwa Mekki.

After two years of talk, is President Jakaya Kikwete now serious about stamping out corruption? He did sack Bank of Tanzania Governor Daudi Balali on 9 January for...

President Jakaya Kikwete’s appointments often annoy his colleagues. In 2005, he took almost a month to announce his cabinet, because the stalwarts in the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi...

Both sides in Kenya’s election stand-off are looking into the abyss and a few politicians are preparing to jump. Without serious efforts now to resolve the impasse between...